


Duckling

by SneakyHufflepuff



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, Joan is amazing, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyHufflepuff/pseuds/SneakyHufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quick fill for the multifandom women ficathon over at lj. For the prompt: joan watson, i wasn't born a beauty queen but i'm okay with that. Features young!Joan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duckling

Joan Watson is beautiful, but she wasn’t always. She spent her early years as an ugly duckling, her baby fat and the childish racism of her schoolmates precluding her from being one of the pretty girls. Then one day, at sixteen, she wakes up and she’s no longer ugly. The right clothes, the right hair, the right makeup and she’d be downright beautiful. But she has a geography test to study for and she’s found her groove, among the nerdy and imperfect. High school students being high school students, no one looks past the ratty clothes and her deliberate lack of ornamentation to see the gift of beauty that puberty has granted her (and they never have the chance to see her dressed up. She skips prom because the Mathletics final is the next morning and she knows which one is more important to Stanford).

Joan is charmed by the first man who calls her beautiful. He means it, caring enough to see beyond the pre-made shapes in his mind. By the time a fourth man has “discovered” her beauty, she’s already bored of it. Hidden beauty is not her most important trait, not by a long shot. College passes by in a blur of As and two failed relationships.

Getting into med school is the shining achievement she'd always imagined it would be. She's one step closer to her goal of saving lives. Still, Joan can’t be bothered to do more than roll her eyes at those who give her helpful suggestions about her appearance. She attends lab with stains on her five dollar shirt as a badge of late nights spent studying. At graduation (top of her class, thank you very much) she wears a thin red dress, eye shadow and strappy heels. The salutatorian gapes at her as if he’s seeing her for the first time.

“You’re beautiful!” he exclaims.

“I know,” she replies.


End file.
